by Johann Hari
34 “The Czar Nobody Knows,” New York Post, Anslinger archives, box 5, file 10.
35 Williams, Drug Addicts, 22.
36 Ibid., 91. A good account of the wider persecution can be found in King, Drug Hang-Up, 47–58.
37 Anslinger archives, box 1, file 9.
38 Acker and Tracey, Altering American Consciousness, 238.
39 Sloman, Reefer Madness, 199. See also King, Drug Hang-Up, 71.
40 Henry Smith Williams, Luther Burbank, 316.
41 Anslinger archives, box 8, file 8, memo marked “California.”
42 Anslinger archives, box 3, file 6, HSW letter to Beck.
43 Anslinger archives, box 3, file 6, letter titled “Memorandum for Mr. Gaston” by Anslinger.
44 Acker and Tracey, Altering American Consciousness, 238.
45 King, Drug Hang-Up, 61.
46 Acker and Tracey, Altering American Consciousness, 238.
47 In 1955, Dr. Hubert Howe testified before a Senate subcommittee explaining that he and his colleagues would like to prescribe opiates “but doctors have been scared away by the Federal Bureau.” See King, Drug Hang-Up, 125–26. See also 139–40.
48 Anslinger, Protectors, 219.
49 Acker and Tracey, Altering American Consciousness, 242.
50 Anslinger, Murderers, 221–22.
51 Ryan Grim, This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America, 44.
52 Alfred Lindesmith, writing in The Washington Post, as reproduced at http://www.onlinepot.org/addictandthelaw/AddictandtheLaw/chapter01.htm. Liberty magazine, February 26, 1938, 43. Anslinger, Protectors, 53–54. Anslinger doesn’t name Hansen in this passage about a crooked agent, but it seems clear from the context that he is discussing him. We know this because the “Lady in Red” whom he discusses was a key part of Hansen’s case: see the Liberty magazine report cited above.
53 National Archives, San Francisco, court cases Nevada, files 9580 and 9581. Williams, Drug Addicts, 100–101.
54 There are three possible interpretations of Hanson’s criminality. The first is Henry Smith Williams’s interpretation: that he was working for them all along, closing the clinics because they wanted him to. The second is that he was working for them all along, but his bribery consisted only of the kind of thing drug dealers pay the police for today: to turn a blind eye. And the third is that he started taking their bribes only after he left California and was posted to Nevada. I favor Henry’s interpretation: Hanson’s own colleagues at the FBN wondered out loud if he had been working for them during his time heading the L.A. bureau. See Official Detective Stories, August 1, 1939, 43.
55 Acker and Tracey, Altering American Consciousness, 255.
56 Henry Smith Williams, Survival of the Fittest, 309–10. This isn’t a simple change. Sometimes Williams voices his old prejudices, although with less vigor than before—they are eroding. See Williams, Drugs Against Men, ix.
57 King, Drug Hang-Up, 61.
58 Sloman, Reefer Madness, 83.
59 “The Tsar Nobody Knows,” New York Post, Anslinger archives, box 5, file 10.
Chapter 3: The Barrel of Harry’s Gun
1 The historian David Bewley-Taylor has done brilliant work on this, and it was only possible to fully retrace what Anslinger had done in the international sphere through his brilliant work.
2 Anslinger archives, box 2, file 20.
3 McWilliams, Protectors, 150; Erlen and Spillane, Federal Drug Control, 194.
4 Davenport-Hines, Pursuit of Oblivion, 275, 284.
5 This Week magazine, March 7, 1948, 22. See also Anslinger, Murderers, 207–11.
6 Valentine, Strength of the Wolf, 68.
7 McWilliams, Protectors, 153. Valentine, Strength of the Wolf, 211.
8 For the full story, see chapters 2 and 4 of David Bewley-Taylor, The U.S. and International Drug Control 1909–1997. See also chapter 21 of King, Drug Hang-Up.
9 Anslinger, Protectors, 19.
10 King, Drug Hang-Up, 225.
11 Bewley-Taylor, U.S. and International Drug Control, 105.
12 Ibid., 48.
13 Anslinger archives, box 5, file 8, article headlined “Gains in War on Dope Told by Anslinger”—no byline or reference to which newspaper.
14 Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 104; John Rainford, Consuming Pleasures, 150; Blackburn, With Billie, 53.
15 Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 104.
16 McWilliams, Protectors, 184.
Chapter 4: The Bullet at the Birth
1 Donald Henderson Clarke, In the Reign of Rothstein, 19.
2 Ibid., 9.
3 Leo Katcher, The Big Bankroll: The Life and Times of Arnold Rothstein, 227. Carolyn Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 31.
4 David Pietrusza, Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series, 10.
5 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 19.
6 Pietrusza, Rothstein, 3.
7 Pietrusza, Rothstein, 3.
8 “Rothstein: Puzzle in Life, Still Enigma in Death,” Pittsburgh Press, Nov 13, 1928, p. 1.
9 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 232.
10 Guys and Dolls was based on Damon Runyon’s short stories, which were inspired by Arnold and Carolyn. See http://www.newrepublic.com/article/109050/american-shylock-arnold-rothstein-1882–1928#, accessed February 24, 2012.
11 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 50.
12 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 19.
13 Katcher, Big Bankroll, 30.
14 Nick Tosches, King of the Jews, 34.
15 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 40. Pietrusza, Rothstein, 2.
16 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 78
17 Ibid., 42.
18 Pietrusza, Rothstein, 43; Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 20.
19 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 30.
20 Ibid., 142–43.
21 Clarke, Reign of Rothstein, 305.
22 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 97.
23 Pietrusza, Rothstein, 198.
24 Daniel Okrent, The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, 221.
25 Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 77.
26 Katcher, Big Bankroll, 238.
27 Valentine, Strength of the Wolf, 7.
28 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 172.
29 Tosches, King of the Jews, 209.
30 Clarke, Reign of Rothstein, 5.
31 Ed Vuiliamy, Amexica, 4.
32 “Indict Arnold Rothstein: Charged With Shooting Two Detectives,” New York Times, June 7, 1919.
33 Tosches, King of the Jews, 288. Clarke, Reign of Rothstein, 6–7, 40–48.
34 Ibid., 52.
35 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 130.
36 Pietrusza, Rothstein, 321.
37 Ibid., 323.
38 Reinarman and Levine, Crack in America, 68. Steven Pinker hints at this in his excellent book The Better Angels of Our Nature, in which he points out that “as drug trafficking has increased” in Jamaica, Mexico, and Colombia, “their rates of homicide have soared.” See page 89. Miller, Case for Legalizing Drugs, 67–68.
39 Clarke, Reign of Rothstein, 50.
39 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 120.
40 Ibid., 34.
41 Ibid., 52.
42 Ibid., 34.
43 Ibid., 16.
44 Ibid., 31-3.
45 Katcher, Big Bankroll, 214.
46 Clarke, Reign of Rothstein, 32.
47 Ibid., 304.
48 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 116.
49 Ibid., 238.
50 Ibid., 240.
51 Ibid., 241.
52 Ibid., 237.
53 Katcher, Big Bankroll, 1.
54 Sherwin D. Smith, “35 Years Ago: Arnold Rothstein was mysteriously murdered,” New York Times Magazine, October 27, 1963.
55 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 246.
56 Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 72.
57 Stanley Walker, The Night Club Era, 11. David Wallace, The Capital of the World: A Portrait of New York City in the Roar
ing Twenties, 260.
58 Clarke, Reign of Rothstein, 289.
59 “Rothstein Estate Is Held Insolvent,” New York Times, October 6, 1935.
60 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 252.
61 “Section of Polite Society Is on Trial with McManus,” Miami News, November 24, 1929, p. 7.
62 Tosches, King of the Jews, 317.
63 “McManus, Gambler, Dies in New Jersey,” New York Times, August 30, 1940, p. 38.
64 Charles Bowden, Murder City, 18.
65 Anslinger, Murderers, 17.
66 John Marks—the subject of a later chapter—in “The Paradox of Prohibition,” undated but clearly written during this period, mailed to me by John Marks, uses the image of “the natural selection of gangsters” and calls it “the Darwinian effect of prohibition.” I had used this image myself before reading this: it seems to be a common image in drug reform literature.
Chapter 5: Souls of Mischief
1 Tony Newman of the Drug Policy Alliance.
2 Chino’s birth name was Pemanicka; he was known as Pam and then Jason for a while, settling on the name Chino around the age of fifteen. For the sake of clarity, I have called him Chino all the way through this text.
3 I have used this phrase before, in a column for the Independent, describing Bette Davis.
4 Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto, 261.
5 Rothstein, Now I’ll Tell, 96.
6 I first learned about this study in The Fix by Michael Massing 39. I then read the original report, P. Goldstein & H. Brownstein (1992), “Drug Related Homicide in New York: 1984 and 1988,” Crime and Delinquency 38, 459–76.
7 Reinarman and Levine, Crack in America, 118.
8 James Gray, Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It, 77.
9 Elizabeth Pisani, The Wisdom of Whores, 231.
10 Pisani, Wisdom of Whores, 232.
11 Interviews with Allan Clear and Judith Rivera.
12 See MacCoun and Reuter, Drug War Heresies, 26–27.
13 http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-04-08/news/rikers-fight-club/, accessed February 5, 2013; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/nyregion/04rikers.html?_r=1, accessed February 5, 2013; http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/nyregion/us-attorneys-office-reveals-civil-rights-investigation-at-rikers-island.html, accessed October 2, 2014.
14 There were times when I was listening to Chino’s story that I found it hard to believe. Could all this really be true? So I met with his best friend from when he was a teenager, his colleagues, and his cousin. They all told a similar story about him. Chino’s arrest records—because his criminal offenses are from before the age of eighteen—are sealed under New York law. However, by phone and e-mail on January 16, 2014, I was able to confirm with the New York Courts system that a person with Chino’s name and birth date did indeed commit multiple criminal offenses in Brownsville, Brooklyn, during the period Chino had described to me, though they could not tell me the nature of the offenses. There were significant parts of the story I couldn’t verify with anyone else—as with Arnold Rothstein, drug dealers don’t keep documentation. But all the parts I could check matched what Chino was telling me.
15 Alexander, New Jim Crow, 97.
16 Glenn Greenwald was one of the first people to make this point to me, I think. I had made a variant of this point in previous articles. This is a very common analogy used by drug reformers, and I suspect it was thought of by many of us simultaneously. The earliest example of its use that I can find is on page 68 of James Gray’s Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It.
17 Jeffrey Miron, Drug War Crimes, 47.
18 Miron, Drug War Crimes, 48.
19 Ibid., 51. The RAND Corporation has interesting research on this, too. See http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2010/RAND_OP325.pdf, accessed January 14, 2014.
Chapter 6: Hard to Be Harry
1 They were: Joe Arpaio in Arizona; Leigh Maddox in Maryland; Stephen Dowling in New York City; Fred Martens in New Jersey; Howard Wooldridge in Washington, D.C.; João Figueira in Lisbon; Joe Toft in Reno, Nevada; Michael Levine in upstate New York; Neil Franklin in Baltimore; Peter Moskos in New York City; Olivier Gueniat in Neuchâtel, Switzerland; Terry Nelson in Fort Worth, Texas; Marisol Valles García in the United States. (I have been asked not to name the city, to protect her safety, since she had to flee Mexican cartels); Richard Newton in El Paso, Texas; and Charlie Mandigo from Washington State.
2 This passage describing Ed Toatley is also informed by my conversation with his colleague Neill Franklin.
3 Timothy Noah, ed., After Prohibition, 94-7.
4 Miron, Drug War Crimes, 50.
5 The Global Commission on Drug Policy, led by former U.S. secretaries of state and other governmental leaders, looked at the evidence and concluded: “Virtually all studies on the subject have concluded that increased levels of enforcement activity have been associated with increased drug market violence.” See The War on Drugs and HIV/AIDS: How the Criminalization of Drug Use Fuels the Global Pandemic, 14. See also http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2010/RAND_OP325.pdf, accessed January 14, 2014.
6 Anslinger, Protectors, ix. Anslinger, Murderers, 15.
7 Del Quentin Wilbur, “Drug Dealer Gets Life for Killing State Trooper,” Baltimore Sun, December 15, 2001, “Telegraph,” 1A.
8 Leigh said this in her speech to the Cato Institute in the fall of 2011. I was in the audience. The audio can be heard at http://www.cato.org/events/ending-global-war-drugs, accessed February 5, 2013.
9 Stephen Manning, “Slain Trooper Remembered as Model Policeman,” Associated Press, November 3, 2000, accessed via LexisNexis April 1, 2013. Wilbur, “Drug Dealer Gets Life.”
10 MacCoun and Reuter, Drug War Heresies, 114.
11 DeGrandpre, Cult of Pharmacology, 174.
12 https://christiansagainstprohibition.org/node/383, accessed January 8, 2014.
13 Alexander, New Jim Crow, 153.
14 Benavie, Drugs: America’s Holy War, 14.
15 Leigh’s speech to the Cato Institute, fall of 2011.
Chapter 7: Mushrooms
1 http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1992-01-20/news/1992020097_1_tiffany-gunmen-baltimore, accessed October 2, 2012.
2 http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-07-11/news/1991192151_1_tiffany-smith-rosedale-turf-war, accessed October 2, 2012.
3 http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-12-11/news/0812100212_1_tiffany-devone-leave-baltimore, accessed October 2, 2012.
Chapter 8: State of Shame
1 I had my audio recorder on almost the whole time I was in Tent City and when I went out with the chain gang, so I have full audio of everything recounted in this chapter.
2 On this particular day, women with domestic violence charges and child support violations were also on this particular chain gang.
3 I have chosen not to give their full names because I don’t want to deepen their humiliation.
4 After a while they took her to medical; the other women told me that that only ever happens when journalists are there. Arpaio claims that the chain gang is voluntary: see Arpaio, Joe’s Law, 126. But the guard overseeing the chain gang says: “They don’t ask to be on there. We put them.” The women confirmed this. They are put in the Hole and the only way out is often the chain gang. One woman told me she chose it because it was better to get out than to feel trapped inside; but most did not choose it.
5 This chapter is informed in particular by interviews with Donna Leone Hamm, Steve Lemmons, and Peggy Plews.
6 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/opinion/sunday/in-arpaios-arizona-they-fought-back.html?_r=0, accessed November 10, 2012.
7 Anslinger achives, box 1, file 10. Arpaio, Joe’s Law, 94.
8 Ibid., 213.
9 http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/problem-sheriff-joe-arpaios-tent-city-analysis/story?id=19804368 and http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/27/joe-arpaio-m
aricopa-county-king-cruel , both accessed October 2, 2014.
10 Gabba later told me she did not believe these women were telling the truth and she had never seen that happen.
11 See the HBO documentary Gladiator Days.
12 I have this note, as well as the name of the prisoner and her ID number, and the documentary filmmaker Rachel Siefert filmed the note the day it was handed to me.
13 The only exception is that some have a cellmate; they are trapped together in a tiny space where they even have to shit in front of each other.
14 I initially learned about this case from Peggy Plews in my interview with her. She wrote about the case first at http://arizonaprisonwatch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/new-az-juvenile-corrections-director_14.html. It was documented in the Amnesty International report “Cruel Isolation: Amnesty International’s Concerns About Conditions in Arizona Maximum Security Prisons,” 22n30.
15 http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=joe+arpaio+animal+shelter&oq=joe+arpaio+animal+shelter&gs_l=hp.3..0j0i5j0i5i30l2.61655.63380.1.63561.14.11.0.3.3.0.201.1081.4j5j1.10.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.lUd2A56Vc0A&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=686a68ff5cd60d08&bpcl=37643589&biw=1175&bih=618, accessed November 10, 2012.
16 MacCoun and Reuter, Drug War Heresies, 24.
17 Graham Boyd, “The Drug War Is the New Jim Crow,” NACLA Report on the Americas, vol. XXXV, no. 1, (July/August 2001): 18.
18 http://nplusonemag.com/raise-the-crime-rate, accessed December 12, 2012.
19 Presentence investigation in case CR9611017, The State of Arizona vs. Marcia Joanne Powell.
20 See Arizona Department of Corrections investigation, summary.
21 Letter from James Hass, Office of the Public Defender, Maricopa County, to the Adult Probation Department, laying out his recommendations for sentencing of Marcia Powell, July 11, 2008. See also e-mail from Gary Strickland to Karyn Klaussner on May 29, 2009, showing the prison was aware she had an appointed guardian, as published in the official inquiry. See also the finding of the Superior Court of Maricopa County July 7, 2008, defining her as an “incapacitated adult.”
22 Arizona Department of Corrections Inspector General’s Report into the death of Marcia Powell.